The views published here are of an ecosocialist nature and from the broad red, green and black political spectrum. The opinions expressed are the personal opinions of the writers and are not necessarily the view of any political parties or groupings that they belong to. Please feel free to comment on the posts here. If you would like to contact us directly, you can email us at mike.shaughnessy@btinternet.com. Follow the blog on Twitter @MikeShaugh

Sunday, 19 May 2019

The Limits of Green Energy Under Capitalism

Renewable
energy is expanding rapidly all around the world. The energy capacity of newly
installed solar projects in 2017, for instance, exceeded
the combined increases from coal, gas and nuclear plants. During the past eight
years alone, global
investment in renewables was $2.2 trillion, and optimism has soared along
with investments. “Rapidly spreading solar technology could change everything,”
announced a piece in the Financial
Times, which also explained that, “there is growing evidence that some
fundamental changes are coming that will over time put a question mark over
investments in old energy systems.”

But can
renewable energy grow fast enough in the market economy to pinch off the use of
fossil fuels and help fend off climate catastrophe? Unfortunately, it’s not
likely. Even as the percentage of global energy generation from renewables
increases, so too does global energy consumption, which means that fossil fuel
emissions are also increasing.

The world’s
energy-related carbon emissions
rose by 1.7 percent in 2017 and energy consumption grew by 2.2 percent, the
fastest rate since 2013. For the past decade, primary energy consumption
increased worldwide at an average rate of 1.7 percent per year. Power
generation rose last year by 2.8 percent with renewable energy providing 49
percent of that increase and most of the rest (44 percent) coming from coal. Globally, oil consumption
grew by 1.8 percent, natural gas by 3 percent and coal consumption
increased by 1 percent. The key point is that greenhouse gas emissions from
fossil fuels are increasing even as renewable energy use is growing.

To visualize
the relationship between the growing percentage of green energy and increasing
total global energy production, imagine a “dynamic energy consumption pie
chart.” A growing portion of the pie represents green energy sources, so that
piece of the pie is getting wider, but the radius of the pie chart also
increases with time to account for the increase of global energy consumption. The pie is getting bigger and bigger while the fossil fuel slice is growing
longer (which is bad) but thinner (which is good). Which process wins out? As
long as fossil fuel use is not decreasing, it doesn’t matter for the climate.

People often
get confused when fossil fuels and renewable energy are discussed together, but
the climate only cares about the former. The latter has no effect. Solar
panels, wind turbines and the like neither help nor harm the climate. The only
thing that matters, in terms of climate disruption, are greenhouse gas
emissions.

It is not
enough for the percentage of green energy to increase each year — unless it
reaches 100 percent of global energy production very quickly. Even if the rate
of greenhouse gas emissions decreases, but doesn’t decrease fast enough, we
face disaster. What is required is that global greenhouse gas emissions
decrease rapidly to zero by midcentury in order for the biosphere to stand a
chance of survival. Unfortunately, even a rapidly increasing percentage of
green energy production is unlikely to achieve that under capitalist market
forces.

What About the Carbon Bubble?

Falling
prices for renewable energy have led academics, activists and investors to warn
of a “carbon
bubble” of overvalued fossil fuel assets in the global economy, which could
lead to a major capitalist crisis. A recent economic study, published in Nature Climate Change
predicted that a sudden decrease in the value of fossil fuels — triggered by
low renewable energy prices — would cause the carbon bubble to burst, and under
the assumption of continuing trends, such an event will likely occur before
2035.

Economic
crises notwithstanding, could the bursting of the carbon bubble at least
prevent or significantly delay environmental collapse? Unfortunately, no. Lead
author Jean-François Mercure warned, as reported
by the Guardian, “that the transition was happening too slowly to stave off
the worst effects of climate change. Although the trajectory towards a
low-carbon economy would continue, to keep
within [2 degrees Celsius] above pre-industrial levels — the limit set
under the Paris agreement — would require much stronger government action and
new policies.”

Capitalism or Survival

Capitalism requires
perpetual economic growth in order to avoid economic crises such as the
Great Depression. More specifically, in order to stave off mass unemployment
and economic misery, capitalism requires increasing commodity production,
escalating resource extraction, increasing trash and toxic dumping, and ever
increasing energy production. Capitalism, by its very nature, must expand
unendingly and it has already surpassed the limits of sustainable growth in the
sense that global consumption now exceeds the planet’s bio-capacity to
regenerate the resources consumed. According to the World
Wildlife Fund, 1.6 Earths would be required to meet the demands humanity
makes on nature each year. Capitalism is not only incapable of responding
adequately to the environmental crisis, it is the very cause of the crisis and
can only make matters worse.

As Richard
Smith points out in Green
Capitalism: The God that Failed, the scale of change needed to achieve a
sustainable civilization is staggering. The rapid reduction of greenhouse gas
emissions together with resource conservation requires that we radically reduce
or close down large numbers of power plants, mines, factories, mills,
processing and other industries around the world. It means drastically cutting
back or closing down not only fossil fuel companies, but the industries that
depend on them, including automobile, aircraft, airline, shipping,
petrochemical, construction, agribusiness, lumber, pulp and paper, and wood
product companies, industrial fishing operations, factory farming, junk food
production, private water companies, packaging and plastic, disposable products
of all sorts, and above all, the war
industries. The Pentagon is the single
largest institutional user of petroleum products and energy.

The loss of
jobs from the de-industrialization required to save ourselves would not be just
a few coal mining and oil drilling jobs but millions of jobs in the
industrialized world. Mainstream environmentalists argue that the jobs versus
the environment dichotomy is a false one, but they are wrong. Within a
capitalist framework that is exactly the choice. What we would need to do
within this framework to save the biosphere, including ourselves, would result
in total economic collapse.

It is not
enough just to oppose capitalism. We also need to create something better: An
alternative system of human relations along the lines of eco-socialism is not
only desirable, it is imperative. Included in such a vision are free health
care, free education, free mass transportation, and since most jobs under
capitalism are pointless or destructive, we need a drastically reduced
workweek.

Polluting
industries will not voluntarily shut down. To accomplish what is needed
requires socializing virtually all large-scale industries. The only way to
rationally reorganize the economy sustainably is to collectively and
democratically plan most of the world’s industrial economies.

While all
kinds of useless, wasteful and polluting industries must be eliminated, we
cannot contract the entire economy. We need to expand some industries,
including renewable energy, public health care, public transit, long-lasting
energy efficient housing, durable mass transportation vehicles, long-lasting
appliances and electronics, repair shops, public schools, public services,
environmental remediation, reforestation and organic farming.

It is
essential that environmental activists begin to focus on ending the economic
system of capitalism itself. The survival of life on this planet depends on it.